If You Are The Only Sane Person Amidst A Large Bunch Of Insane People
by carrafin
Summary: (title, cont'd: Does It Make Them Sane And You Insane) The Yorozuya decide to enter Kagura into a beauty pageant for the 10 million yen prize money. Chaos ensue.


It was another typical, unremarkable and unproductive day for the Yorozuya. Gintoki was mindlessly watching the TV, Kagura was trying to shove as many marbles up her nose as possible and Shinpachi was fermenting in a corner bemoaning the Yorozuya's constant state of abject poverty. They had spent the morning engaging in a brutal showdown over the last 200 yen of their savings, a toss up between a tub of strawberry ice-cream, a new Otsu figurine and a pack of sukonbu. After much screaming, biting and collateral damage a truce had been called for involving sukonbu-flavoured ice-cream with Otsu's face on the ice-cream carton, only to be rendered moot when everyone realised that the Sadaharu had devoured the money.

'We could chop Sadaharu into half and get the 200 yen back,' Gintoki offered, surfing the channels aimlessly. 'And then maybe mince the corpse into a sausage or something and sell it.' His suggestion was promptly met with a series of swift and deadly punches from Kagura and a furious bite on his head from Sadaharu.

'_Gin-san_!' Shinpachi let out an unholy screech. 'Stop changing the channel! Look at the TV!'

The trio turned their heads in unison, only to be greeted by a cheery advertisement blaring out from the TV.

'Calling out to all the beautiful girls of Edo! The annual Edo Beauty Contest will be held and the end of this week at Edo's great concert hall; this exciting event will showcase the most celebrated beauties of Edo! Registration for the contest is totally free and the winner will be crowned Ms. Edo of the year, and given TEN MILLION YEN!'

A rare bout of profound silence graced the Yorozuya HQ.

Gintoki was the first to leap into action like a demon possessed. 'Kagura!' He hollered. 'We must get you ready!'

'She needs to get a tan!' Shinpachi shrieked. 'And a diet! Kagura-chan, you need to go on a diet!'

'Wait,' Kagura protested. 'Why am I the one entering the competition?'

'Because you are the _girl _in our group,' Shinpachi explained with great patience.

'That's right,' Gintoki agreed enthusiastically, only to stop and frown. 'Actually no, you're so flat and unappealing that you can't be a girl at all.'

'Shut up!' Kagura snapped. 'I'm flat and undeveloped because you don't feed me enough food, uh-huh!'

'She needs to drink milk,' Shinpachi quipped brightly, making his way to the fridge. 'Sis used to drink milk, like, _all the time _when she was trying to grow a chest.'

'Eh, it didn't seem to work, though,' Gintoki replied, although he joined Shinpachi in his frantic milk-searching quest. 'Damn! We ran out of milk,' he cursed. Gintoki started walking towards Sadaharu, reaching his hands out desperately. 'Maybe Sadaharu has milk?'

Kagura shrieked and stomped on Gintoki. 'Sadaharu is not a girl! Or a _cow_! And also I am not joining the contest!'

'But Kagura,' Gintoki pleaded. 'Think about all the sukonbu you'll get to eat.'

'Shut up! I'm not going!' Kagura replied, but it was too late. Gintoki had picked up the slightest bit of sukonbu-induced hesitance in the young girl's retort, and, like a true samurai, he wasn't going to let the window of vulnerability slip.

'Lots of lots of sukonbu,' he continued dreamily. 'Actually, with the prize money we could just buy a whole sukonbu factory altogether...'

'Shut… up...'

And that was that.

* * *

><p>(The day of the competition)<p>

'Wake up, Kagura-chan! Gin-san! We are going to be late!' Shinpachi shouted as he sprinted up the stairs to the second storey of Otose's Snack Shop, equipped with a huge sack containing a most haphazard collection of his sister's makeup and accessories collection, the contents of which included no less than twenty lipsticks, a very sexy bikini and Shimura Tae's most prized possession: boob enhancers that could grant salvation to even the most tragically unendowed. 'Kagura-chan! Gin-san! The first segment starts in less than an hour's time!'

Gintoki and Kagura sprang out of bed liked rabbits on steroids.

'We're late! We're late!' Gintoki clutched his head frantically, running around and slamming head first into Shinpachi. Five tubes of mascara and a feathery beach hat rolled out from the sack.

Shinpachi threw a quick glance at Kagura - _fizzy bed hair that could only charm mother birds looking for nests, a chin dribbled with sweat, a most unsightly sack-like night gown _- and resisted the urge to herniate. 'We have to get Kagura ready!'

'She could go au-naturel,' Gintoki suggested.

'As what, a natural sea mammoth?!'

'How dare you call a young and blossoming lady a beast, uh-huh!'

'Actually he's right-'

'What did you say!'

'We have to stop fighting!' Shinpachi cried. 'We need to get you ready, Kagura-chan!' He turned to Kagura, scanning her properly from head to foot. 'First, we need to do something about the hair. Then the three pimples on your face - I _told _you not to eat chocolates three days from the contest - and then the outfit- -'

Shinpachi rummaged through the sack and miraculously produced an assortment of hair straightening tools, a surprisingly decent looking kimono and a random bunch of makeup products to the awe of everybody in the room.

'Last but not least,' Shinpachi plunged his hand into the magical sack and dramatically pulled out a pair of boob enhancers. 'My sister's boob enhancers!' (A small part of his brain knew that his sister would castrate him when she found out but Shinpachi was reasonably optimistic that he would be on a helicopter (funded by the prize money) bound to Sierra Leone by then.)

Gintoki looked at Shinpachi like one would worship a god. 'Pachi,' he choked back tears. 'I was wrong about you all this time.'

Shinpachi threw Gintoki a dirty look and wisely chose to ignore his comment. 'Alright!' he turned to Kagura, who was scrutinising an eyelash curler with immense amazement and wonder. 'Time for us to work some magic...'

* * *

><p>Forty frantic minutes later Shinpachi and Gintoki stepped back and took a long and hard look at their magnum opus.<p>

Kagura was decked in Otae's simple and charming garment: a pretty little blue kimono with the sweetest sakura blossoms on the sleeves and a coquettish little slit at the edge, revealing just a coy, teeny bit of Kagura's fair legs. She twirled a dainty little red umbrella in her hands, the very symbol of girlish elegance, nevermind that said umbrella was also capable of blasting out bullets with enough strength to turn space bears into swiss cheese within minutes. The lovely and delicate outfit was accompanied by-

Kagura's face which looked like it had been made over by a very enthusiastic surrealist graffiti artist, with chronic alcohol and LSD abuse, on a particularly trippy day. Shinpachi had mistakenly smeared Kagura's face with a generous dollop of lipstick thinking that it was foundation; Sadaharu had eaten the Perfect Pretty Princess Peach eyeshadow before they could move on to applying it on the other eye and Gintoki had hastily grabbed the nearest bottle, Smoky Sultry Steal-your-husband Scarlet to decorate Kagura's second eye, and the fact that Kagura could not sit still for more than two seconds meant that there were random trails and blotches of lipstick and mascara and eyeliner running all over her face, not unlike a truly horrifying fungal skin infection. The bizarre makeover was literally topped with a straggly dirty looking wig made from Sadaharu's tail after Gintoki had accidentally burned off half of Kagura's hair with the hair straightener.

'_Well_,' Gintoki broke the silence with a modest shrug. 'It isn't half bad-'

'_Isn't half bad_?!' Shinpachi sounded like a crazed madman pushed to the brink of abject despair. 'Kagura's face looks like the diarrhoea of a grizzly bear! Right now Sadaharu has a higher chance of winning than she does!'

'Woof,' barked Sadaharu at the mention of its name and, unwilling to miss out on the fun, gave Kagura's face a series of very enthusiastic licks, effectively removing every single drop of makeup on her face.

'The makeup!' Gintoki looked like someone had robbed him of his testicles. 'The stupid dog ate the makeup!'

'There's no time left,' Shinpachi replied hastily, shoving the pile of makeup away from Gintoki's reach. 'The event starts in less than fifteen minutes. We have to leave now!'

'Yahoo!' Kagura cheered as she mounted onto Sadaharu with shocking ease for someone wrapped in three layers of kimono. 'Let's go, Sadaharu! Time to win ten million yen!'

They leapt out from the window, Gintoki and Shinpachi grabbing onto the dog's tail for dear life.

* * *

><p>A cut to the contest hall-<p>

'Ladies and gentlemen!' The commentator announced into his mike. 'Aliens and boys and girls! We welcome you to our fifteenth annual Edo Beauty Contest!'

Loud cheering ensued as the contestants streamed onto the stage, one by one, accompanied by a shower of confetti and pounding, enthusiastic pop music. 'This year, we are pleased to see a _marked _increase in the number of _outstanding _contestants; ladies and gentlemen, aliens and boys and girls, you are in for a treat tonight! First up for today we have-'

He was interrupted as a part of the hall ceiling promptly collapsed and a beastly looking canine sprinted onto the stage, accompanied by a young girl in a kimono and two men looking like they had just crawled out of Satan's washing machine. There was general chaos and shrieking as debris rained down upon the the audience.

'What's happening-' the nonplussed commentator was about to continue, only to have his mike snatched away by a very scruffy Gintoki.

'Listen up!' Gintoki hollered into the mike, ignoring the other glowering contestants. 'The winner of today's contest has finally arrived FASHIONABLY late! Ha ha, do you get it? Because beauty contests are all about fashion and-'

'Gintoki! What are you doing? I won't allow you to mess around here!'

A sword flew out from nowhere, barely missing Gintoki's head. A tall, suspiciously muscular and broad-shouldered contestant strode forward, long dark hair billowing behind her -

'What the hell?' Gintoki spluttered. 'Zura?'

'It's not Zura, it's Katsunana!' hollered Katsura passionately.

'What the hell are you doing in a _beauty pageant_?'

'Shut up! You, a vagrant, will never be able to understand the financial struggles of a jou-' They lunged at each other at the same time.

'Stop it!' Shinpachi rushed into the scuffle to break them up, only to be punched on both sides of his face; eventually the three of them rolled ungracefully down the stage.

'Well!' the commentator picked up the mike and looked around with great bemusement and wariness, as though another creature might blast through the roof at any moment. 'L-let's ignore the scuffle and carry on with the event. Would the newcomer over there get in line with the rest of the contestants?' He gestured to Kagura.

'Now,' the commentator continued. 'There will be two stages to this contest. The first will be the get-to-know-your-contestant stage, where each contestant will come up and introduce herself. The second stage will be the talent contest, where each member must come up with her best talent to showcase on stage. Without further ado, we welcome our first contestant of the day - the stunning Yagyu Kyubei!'

A striking, albeit deeply unhappy looking woman stepped forward, dressed in a regal looking red kimono, a monkey perched onto her shoulder. A tall, blonde man leapt up from the crowd and started screaming enthusiastically. 'Everybody! That's our lady! Everyone repeat after me, K-Y-U-B-E-I, K-Y-'

Kyubei whispered furiously to her monkey under her breath. The monkey nodded, drew a shuriken from its tiny shirt and aimed it squarely onto the man's forehead. Shrieking noises filled the hall as Toujou Ayumu collapsed into a crumpled bloody heap in the middle of the audience.

'Well, if it isn't the daughter of the famous Yagyu family, Yagyu Kyubei!' The commentator looked like he might cry. 'So tell me, what brings you here to this contest today?'

'My daddy said that winning the title of Ms Edo would bring great honour to the Yagyu name.'

'I see. What a touching story! The… delicate.. heiress of the great Yagyu family, taking on such a challenge for the sake of her clan! Thank you Ms Yagyu!'

Kyubei stepped back into the line.

'Next we have our beauty from Yoshiwara, Tsukuyo!'

A beautiful woman stepped forward, decked in a dignified black kimono, her straw coloured hair twisted into an immaculate, elegant bun held together by a pearly hairpin. Her pale face was smooth and her scars completely covered, testament to the impeccable makeup skills of the women of Yoshiwara.

'So, Tsukuyo! Why don't you tell us more about yourself, like your favourite colour perhaps?'

'Red.' Tsukuyo smiled serenely.

'Red! The colour of deep passion, of autumn leaves in the sky, of unbridled romantic love. Is that not right, Ms Yagyu?'

'Actually, I meant blood red, like the blood of scums I cut down everyday.'

An eerie silence descended upon the crowd as everyone let the knowledge sink in. Tsukuyo smiled menacingly, in a way that promised a very slow but sure death to anyone who would dare to suggest otherwise.

'That's very… unique.. and… inspired!' The commentator's voice now had an extremely strained quality to it. 'Well, that's it for Tsukuyo! Next up we have the gorg… err… we have Kondo-kins!'

The audience's enthusiastic clapping weaned off slowly as the newest contestant lumbered onto the stage with a quality that could only be described as the antithesis of elegance. It was a truly mortifying combination: the contestant sported a huge frilly looking wedding dress, ripped biceps and chin full of scars which looked suspiciously like the product of a most brutal and hurried last minute shaving session.

There was a pregnant and uncomfortable silence. The pregnant and uncomfortable silence in turn gave birth to many tinier silences, each more acutely uncomfortable than the last.

'Er- well - hello Kondo-kins! What brings you here today?'

'I am here today to execute DUTY and JUSTICE!' Kondo-kins bellowed.

'Well, well! What a spirit!' Said the commentator, sweating a little as he narrowly dodged an enthusiastic fist pump. 'Could you elaborate on it a little more?'

'I'm sorry,' Kondo-kins said. 'That would be a top secret of the Shinseng…' A huge gasp. 'I mean, I can't - I mean, I'm just shy about it, okay?' Kondo-kins laughed awkwardly, reaching out and giving the commentator what was clearly meant to be a friendly and flirtatious pat, which unfortunately sent the man flying head-first into the stage. In the audience an undercover Shinsengumi agent choked a little on his mayo-ice-blended-with-extra-mayo in a fit of distress and acute embarrassment for his superior.

A few more contestants later, it was Kagura's turn.

'And now for the youngest member of today's contest, we have Kagura! Could you tell us what your favourite hobbies are, Kagura?'

'Uh… sparring using dung beetles, eating rice and sukonbu, having burp contests with Gin-chan-'

'She means doing flower arrangements, and sewing, and helping out twice a week in the soup kitchen!' Came a muffled cry from a certain silver haired man within the audience. 'Kagura, have you forgotten what we rehearsed the past week?'

'Everyone, please! Alright, the last question, Kagura - if you had one wish, what would you wish for?'

'A lifetime supply of sukonbu!'

'World peace! The answer is world peace!' Gintoki shouted frantically from the crowd, ignoring the scandalised glances around him. 'Kagura you idiot, why can't you just go with what we told you?'

'It's not my fault you guys made me memorise so many lines! I just forgot, uh-huh!'

'There weren't even that many lines you little shit-'

'Go away, Gin-chan!' Kagura screamed, enraged. She swung open her umbrella and fired a rapid succession of shots towards the audience. Mass screaming ensued.

'Alright, alright!' The commentator continued frantically. 'We shall now move on to the second round of the contest - the talent competition! We shall begin in reverse order, starting from Kagura! Kagura, what do you have in stall for the audience today?'

As if answering his question, Sadaharu leapt up from the audience and assumed its place next to Kagura. Kagura puffed out her chest proudly. 'Sadaharu and I will be performing tricks for the audiences!'

In the audience, Shinpachi and Gintoki held their breath expectantly. They hadn't placed much faith in Kagura acing the first segment, but they had high hopes for the talent show. Both Shinpachi and Gintoki agreed that while Kagura had the allure and linguistic prowess of a neanderthal with a lobotomy, surely no one could ever resist the heartwarming, tear-jerking image of an innocent little girl performing neat tricks with her furry white pet puppy. Also, surely the audience would be taken enough by the scene to neglect the fact that said girl had just brutally attempted homicide and that said puppy was probably monstrous enough to qualify as the offspring of a yeti.

'Sadaharu? What's wrong, Sadaharu?' Kagura asked, concerned as the dog wobbled on the stage, unable to move. 'Are you scared or something?'

Sadaharu made an agonised, whimpering noise that reminded Gintoki of a gorilla getting its balls chopped off -

and released a slew of diarrhoea into the audience, leaving every single spectator within a ten row radius drenched in its foul smelling excrement.

'It must've been the makeup you licked off my face!' Kagura cried dramatically as she shook Sadaharu anxiously, completely oblivious to the uproar that had ensued from the poop-spraying. 'You poor little thing!'

'I've had enough!' Katsura screamed as he clambered his way up onto the stage. 'You people are ruining my plans to win the prize money!'

'Zura? Why the hell are you here?'

'It's not Zura, it's Katsunana!'

'Ms Katsunana,' pleaded the commentator in great distress. 'Please refrain from violence-'

'It's not Katsunana,' snapped Katsura. 'It's Katsura!'

'That's him! Katsura's really here! The intel was correct!' Kondo roared as he ripped his dress off in one smooth motion, revealing a pair of pearly white underpants and a disturbingly hairy chest. All at once, undercover shinsengumi members from within the audience rose and started to advance towards the stage.

'Tch, what a bunch of fools.' Katsura plunged his hand into the folds of his kimono and withdrew a handful of grenades. 'But luckily I came prepared. WAHAHAHA! Sayounara, you shinsengumi dogs!'

Kondo lunged forward, but it was too late. There was a swift flinging motion, then world turned white.

* * *

><p>In the end, everything was for moot.<p>

The ten million yen prize money was spent renovating the contest hall, although the damage dealt would better qualify the construction work as 'rebuilding' rather than 'renovation'. Katsura was caught by an ambush team hiding in the carpark next to the hall, but later escaped by blowing ten more holes through the shinsengumi headquarters using bombs hidden strategically in his underpants. Shinpachi managed to slip the boob enhancers back into his sister's wardrobe without arousing much suspicion, although Shimura Tae would spend a long time wondering where her favourite Perfect Pretty Princess Peach eyeshadow had vanished to. The commentator of the contest packed all his belonging and was purportedly seen in Edo's space station begging the ticket seller to just sell him a '_one-way ticket to a planet, any damn planet, actually I want the planet furthest away from Edo_'. The annual Edo Beauty Contest was put on an indefinite hiatus.

Kagura was perhaps the only clear winner of the entire scuffle. Before Katsura had managed to blow the entire concert hall into smithereens, Kagura had managed to fish out the elusive 200 yen from Sadaharu's excrement. Much to the bewilderment of Gintoki and Shinpachi, Kagura could be seen chewing contentedly on a pack of sukonbu for the entire week following the contest, humming her favourite tunes, Sadaharu lying serenely by her side.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I need to stop writing crack whenever I don't sleep for two days in a row. I need to stop writing crack whenever I don't sleep for two days in a row. I need to stop writing crack whenever I don't sleep for two days in a row!<strong>

***ahem* Firstly, if you have read my atrocity of a fic till the end, I thank you very much, you are a wonderful human being blessed with great patience and determination and I am certain you will go far in life. Secondly, this is my first time using such crude and slapstick and frankly... weird humour (diarrhoea jokes and toilet humour... wtf wtf wtf how low can one sink), but I really wanted to write everything in line with Gintama's unique and (oddly) charming brand of humour, insofar as I could. I can objectively say that it failed, but I haven't had such fun writing a fic for a long time, so ultimately I'm still glad, I guess. (srsly tho, when I write fics I end up feeling like I'm in labour 95% of the time)**

**Also, I have this weirdest love-hate relationship going on with Gintama's honorifics; I love them because they add flavour and subtleties wrt character interactions, but IT IS SUCH A PAIN TO INCLUDE THEM CONSISTENTLY AND PROPERLY IN FICS. Or maybe it's just me being lazy... nevermind. That said, I am 200% sure that I made some error regarding that somewhere, so feel free to correct me if you find anything wrong.**

**I'm also contemplating writing a male version of this... we'll see I guess ;)**


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